Generally, a refrigerator appliance includes a freezer compartment and a fresh food compartment partitioned from each other. Various food items may be stored in the freezer and fresh food compartments at appropriate low temperatures. It is common to provide an automatic icemaker/water dispenser with a refrigerator. In a “side-by-side” type of refrigerator where the freezer compartment is arranged to the side of the fresh food compartment, the icemaker is usually disposed in the freezer compartment and thus utilizes the cold air in the freezer compartment, which typically includes an evaporator also disposed in the freezer compartment. In a “bottom freezer” type of refrigerator where the freezer compartment is arranged beneath a top mounted fresh food compartment, convenience necessitates that the icemaker is disposed in a sub-compartment (often referred to as an “icebox”) that is usually thermally insulated and configured in one of the top mounted fresh food compartment doors with ice delivered through an opening on the door. In such an arrangement, provision must be made for providing adequate refrigeration to the icebox to enable the icemaker to form and store the ice. An access door is commonly provided on the icebox to allow the consumer to access the internal ice bucket and icemaker.
Typically, the ice maker delivers ice into a storage container or bucket where the ice is kept until used. A panel on the front of the refrigerator allows a user to select between the dispensing of crushed ice or non-crushed ice. Conventionally, to dispense crushed ice, the ice is pushed, e.g., by an auger, through a chute or channel equipped with an ice crusher having one or more blades carried on a shaft. The blades rotate with the shaft to contact and crush the ice being pushed through the chute. Chilled water can also be provided by routing a thermally conductive conduit to the panel such that the water is cooled before reaching the dispenser.
The ice container, dispenser, and ice crusher can consume a significant amount of space in the freezer or fresh food compartment. Space is consumed not only by the volume required for ice creation and storage, but also by the mechanisms for moving and/or crushing the ice. A user may prefer to have such consumed space available for food storage. Depending upon how the components are positioned within these compartments, user access to portions of the compartment and/or to the ice storage container (e.g., for cleaning or manually collecting ice) can be inconvenient as well.
Further, conventional ice dispenser and crusher assemblies have had motor couplings along a vertical axis of the refrigerator appliance with the motor being positioned below both the opening in the bucket and the dispenser crusher mechanism. The vertical motor coupling requires that the ice bucket have an additional spring-loaded lever mechanism to prevent relative motion between the coupling and the drum that rotates the dispenser crusher mechanism. Such spring-loaded lever mechanisms add cost and complexity to ice dispenser crusher mechanisms. Moreover, positioning the motor below the opening in the bucket causes the motor to become wet, e.g., when the ice melts.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide an ice dispensing crusher mechanism for an ice dispensing assembly that addresses one or more of these challenges.